fio does things

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About Me

email: fiomakesthings@googlemail.com
website: www.fiomakesthings.com
I'm a twenty-two year old lady girl in her third year studying BA Design for Digital Media at Leeds College of Art and Design. My main interests are web and interactive design, specifically HTML + CSS, Processing, interactive installations, web 2.0 niceties like twitter, and I'm now going to force myself to learn Actionscript 3.0.

23.9.09

I'm leaving this blog up as a little homage to my time at lovely Leeds College of Art and Design, as I did actually collect a lot of information during my three years there, and it may be useful to me and others that somehow manage to stumble onto here.

5.6.09

Last night I made some wires just to show that 1) my idea does work, and 2) and secondly I want to stop people nicking my wooly things. I was origianally planning on the wooly things reacting the the RFID reader, but as they run on the same serial port channel there seems to be some interference going on. I'm not sure processing can read and write to serial ports simultaneously either. So I'm now using the wires to hook up the fun LEDs and stuff to a power source. The arduino program is a simple one that blinks the LEDs and makes the vibe boards pulse.

4.6.09

I've spent a lot of time in the project exploring different possible technologies to use, including hacking wiimotes, Arduino, RFID, and colour tracking. I explored all the different strengths and weaknesses of each tech: colour tracking being pap in low light, and interfered with by similarly coloured objects, wiimotes being temperamental little things and prone to errors in Processing in my experience, Arduino being one of the most appealing technologies I looked into, but all the fun components get a little bit expensive on my budget, and RFID only reading tags, not tracking. I'm now going to look into the uses of the two technologies that I have decided to use, and the potential uses of what I have created using them.

When I first started this project I was quite interested in tracking the users around the space, which still interests me, but as I progressed through the project I found myself becoming more interested in creating a tactile interface, and the technologies that were best to create one were what I ended up using - Arduino and RFID tagging. The RFID tagging allowed me to create physical objects that could be recognized by the computer, allowing the real world to interact with the data in the computer. The Lilypad allowed me to create objects that were not only clever and glowy and wow, but allowed me to create objects that the user wants to pick up and interact with. The knitting also helped with that, people seem to be comfortable with the objects and find them familiar because of the way they are made.

"In of itself, I don't find RFID that exciting. When it's connected to a greater network (e.g. a database, the web, other intelligent devices, etc.) , that's when it can get really interesting." - Doria Fan

Doria fan uses RFID tags to create objects that are imbued with personal histories, without overpowering the object with technology. Her RFID enabled medical history bracelets are still bracelets, the technology does not interfere with the practicality of the object.

The tags inside the medical bracelets contain activate a link to the patients online medical history, making it a beautiful but practical object, containing the wearers personal history.

iTea is another RFID tagging system which uses the internet to bring up data.

Dropping your conference pass in a tea cup scans the internet for data about you. Some information is taken off a social network site, some is googled, allowing the user to see their personal profile made by the internet, whether it's true or false.

To sum it up, the wonderful thing about RFID is that it enables an object to be two different things. It remains the object it was or was intended to be, the bracelet is still a bracelet, the big wooly cloud is still a big wooly cloud, but it allows the object to take on a different aspect as well. It becomes an object that can interface with the digital world, and can bring up data that not only relates to the object, but adds to its meaning.

I've looked into the uses of the Arduino lilypad before, so this bit will be a little bit shorter. Basically, after my experimentation and research in my last project, which focused on the lilypad being a technology to create wearable textiles, I found myself wanting to experiment with it more in a different context. I have researched in toy hacking as part of this project, looking into the creations from the mediamatic workshop, which while were brilliant examples of the toys getting new functionalities, the objects lost some of their identities as toys, what with the wires poking out of them. Granted they were prototypes from a workshop, but I wanted to create objects that were still objects. My little wooly friends were designed to be wired up, and buzzing around around the place and blinding people with ultra bright LEDs, but I wanted them to retain the element of familiarity and softness brought about by creating them by knitting, even before i knew I was going to knit them or reminded myself how to knit. By using the lilypad I was able to make them into "shiny wow wow's", but by using soft circuits was able to keep them as approachable objects.

So then, how could what I have made be used? My program, even there are around a thousand lines in it, is rather simplistic. It gets the feed, matches it up with the RFID tag and spits it out to the screen. And makes some swirly animations. All rather nice but the data it's getting, and the way it gets it could be used in other ways. Some examples are in the RFID examples above, using the technology to personalise objects and drag in data from the internet. The use of the weather data itself lends it to be used with a mapping system like google maps, returning the data to it's geographical context, and reminding people who don't have such a detailed map in there heads of where places are in relation to each other. The weather feed could also be used in conjunction with other feeds, perhaps used with flickr, to create a link between a weather state and the most recent and geographically appropriate geotagged photo uploaded, creating a visual representation of the weather that is more closely related to the data than my swirly graphics.

There are many things it could be used for i suppose, now that I've figured out how to do the simpler parts (getting the feed, getting it to the screen, using RFID tags), I plan to keep exploring the possibilities.

my immense, pretty much final, it works and it looks pretty and that's more than enough for me, code.

but before i bore you with the boring source code, here's some pretty pictures of it working.

Once an RFID enabled wooly (or not) symbol of weather is placed on the the reader, the code looks for weather matching the object, in several different cities. An animation is played representing the weather, and if matching weather is found, the city and state of weather is written to the screen, on top of the animation. If the weather doesn't match the RFID tag, a line stating that the weather isn't happening in that particular city is displayed.

For example, placing the symbol for partially cloudy weather on the reader triggers an animation representing that weather. If the weather is partially cloudy in Leeds, the program will show the phrase "It is partly cloudy in Leeds". If the weather in Leeds isn't cloudy, the program will show "It is not partly cloudy in Leeds".

I did experiment with code that tells you what the weather is like in the city if it doesn't match the symbol. So if it wasn't partly cloudy in Leeds, and was actually sunny, putting the partially cloudy symbol on the RFID reader would show the phrase "it's actually sunny in Leeds". Once I did this code I realised it defeated the whole point of having several different objects. Once one object is placed on the reader there is no incentive to place other objects on the reader, and find out what the weather is actually like in that city.

As you see in the examples above, it does return quite a lot of "it's not whatever in where-ever", but this is actually needed to show that the program is doing something, and that the weather you looked for isn't happening everywhere, or where you are looking.

It's not designed to be a simple way to find out what the weather is. For that there is the news or weather websites. This is simply a playful object designed to show and get people to interact with the data in a different way. To bring it to people in a tactile way that makes them hunt out what the weather is.

// having to run this in Processing 1.0 as the version i have been using// for the rest of the project (0148) has issues with the delay tag

// Now working pretty much fully!!!// Displays Animations and Text, and doesn't contradict itself.// Slightly jittery, need to work on getting the delays right - long enough to read the text but not so long it slows down the animation.

I decided to try to use my new shiny Duemilanove to test my little wooly bits, and the not so wooly ones. Turned out to be a lot easier than using the lilypad to test them. Instead of having to spend ages sewing up circuits just to rip them back out. I simply plugged one end into the 5v and one into the ground.

This is the only thing that's faulty beyond squishing it into working! The vibe board in the cloud works, but the little sun doesn't light up. This is a bit annoying as I tested it quite extensively while making it.

Here's another cloud with a vibe board in it, this one works fine, although you can't see it in the photo.

31.5.09

My hands are going to be wrecked by the end of this week. This weekend I have been putting the final touches to my clouds, amongst other things, which I will blog about later.

After putting the knitting together to at least partially look like a cloud, I got the vibe boards ready to sew into the clouds. I've been using scraps of material to hold each of the components, so it can be put together like a puzzle, which is nice and easy.

I've placed the vibe boards on the back of the clouds, so while the user is holding it they can feel the vibe better. Here's me placing it...

And it sewn in...

I then worked on the little sun for the partially sunny cloud, finishing off the back of the circuit and sewing it up.

Here he is all poofy and ready to be sewn in. The threads sticking out of him are conductive threads, ready to feed into the cloud to continue the circuit for the vibe board up to the little sun.

I then used some more scraps to make a little path for the conductive thread to go along inside the cloud.

Put the sun where I wanted him, and sewed him in.

I then tested him to make sure that he still worked, here's me attaching a temporary power source to test it.

I then connected the little sun circuit down to the vibe board circuit, and tested it all again..

'ello!

Now I just need to stuff him and put the RFID card in. The RFID reader was being a little temperamental last night but seems to be working now, hopefully will still be working for the exhibition.